Ep 29. Stop waiting to be found: How introverts can proactively build their audience

If you’re wondering why your content isn’t growing your audience fast enough, it’s probably because you’re waiting to be found instead of actively going out and finding your sweet spot clients.

In this episode, I’m gonna share exactly where to find them and how to do it without feeling spammy or pushy.

If you’re new here, hello and a very warm welcome to Quiet Confidence with myself, Anita Popat. This is the podcast for introverts who want to market their thing without changing who you are.

Now I get it, it feels so much safer to post content and wait for people to find you, right? But if you’re only relying on your content to do all of the heavy lifting, you’re missing out on connecting with so many people who would be perfect for you to work with.

When it comes to marketing, you know you need to keep bringing new people into your world all the time, and you can’t just wait for them to find you. You need to go and find them too.

Now, before you stop this episode and go somewhere else, hear me out. I’m not gonna get you to do any cold outreach or be really spammy. It’s all about being strategic.

I want you to build an audience of the right people, and by right people, I mean people who resonate with the way you do your work and are willing to pay for it now or at some point in the future.

For us introverts, this can feel really good because it’s intentional. You’re not randomly doing stuff, you’re being targeted and purposeful and this is how we like to work anyway.

This is why content alone isn’t enough, because I see this happening all the time.

People create amazing content, they show up consistently with their valuable insights, and you’re doing everything right on paper, but your audience isn’t growing or it’s growing really slowly. And then you get frustrated because you’re putting all this effort in and it’s not turning into clients, so you either stop or you just put yourself down and it’s not you.

We know the algorithm doesn’t show your content to everyone (feels like it’s getting lower and lower every year), new people are only finding you when they search for something specific or if someone shares your content or if you pop up in their suggested feed.

That’s a lot of “if’s”, so you need good content, Yeah, but you also need to go out and actively find and connect with people who look like they’re gonna be an ideal client.

So think about it this way, you wouldn’t open a shop and just hope people walk past. You’d put up signs, invite people in, and let them know you exist and welcome them into your world, right? That’s what proactive audience building is, it’s just letting your future clients know you’re here.

If you’re thinking, okay, yeah, that sounds good, but how do I actually do it? Well, let me tell you. Let’s talk about how to find these people.

I’ll focus on strategies that work across all social media platforms. So you can do this on LinkedIn, Instagram, wherever your ideal clients hang out. There’s places that I look at when I wanna find these people.

The first and obvious thing is to use the search bar, and you can use that to search for job titles or services. (This is why it’s really important to know who you wanna attract).

On LinkedIn you can search by job titles or keywords in their headline, and on Instagram you can search for keywords in their bios, ad that will come up with a list of accounts.

I don’t want you to connect with everyone, look at their profile, read their recent posts, get a feel of what they might be like, and make sure they actually fit in with your sweet spot client before you send a connection request or follow them.

More often than not, you’ll get accounts shown to you that are similar to the one you’ve already followed or engaged with. So once you’ve found one ideal client, the platform will help you find more by suggesting more of them to you. So use that as well.

Thirdly, look for people who’ve got similar audiences to you. They might be direct competitors, but they also might be people who’ve got a service that’s in synergy with you.

For me, I’ll share similar audiences with brand photographers or web designers or people who offer SEO and things like that.

Have a look to see who their followers are and see if there’s anyone in their world that might look like an ideal client too.

There’s other ways as well, like looking for virtual events, webinars, workshops that your other client might attend. But if you’re just starting out, I think these three are the easiest ways to start looking for people that might be a good fit for you,

Obviously those three approaches are quite manual, but they’re really intentional because you’re actively going out and finding people.

There’s also less manual ways to grow your audience with the right people.

Ads is the obvious choice. You can get in front of your ideal client much faster with ads because you can target by demographics, interest, behaviors, and you’re reaching exactly who you want to without spending hours and hours searching for them. So that’s a quicker route if you’ve got a budget for that.

Another thing that works is creating shareable content. This is again, where it really pays to know who it is that you’re talking to, so that you can create content that’s so valuable or relatable that they wanna share it with their audience.

And that could be to make people laugh or those quote graphics are often a good thing for people to share so that they can inspire people in their audience.

When someone shares your post to their network, that’s gold because that person’s advocating for you, and that builds more curiosity from the people who aren’t already following you, but also more trust that you know what you’re talking about to the people who are already following you as well.

You obviously can’t force content to go viral. And, for me, that’s not the point of creating content anyway. You can create content that serves your people so well that they think, oh my God, my audience need to see this too.

So you can use the manual strategies I mentioned earlier to build your audience in a more controlled way to build genuine connections, then you can add ads and shareable content on top so you can scale faster. Ideally you wanna do a mix of both so you’re always growing your audience in the background.

Now where I see a lot of introverts getting stuck is finding these people but not knowing what to say or worrying about coming across as like pushy or salesy.

Let me give you some guidelines.

When you connect with or follow someone, you don’t have to send a message straight away.

There’s some LinkedIn police who’ll be like, oh, I’ll never send a connection request with no message. But I’m the opposite. I usually follow people or connect with them first, and then once they’ve accepted , I’ll send a genuine message.

If we use the shop analogy, as if they were coming into my shop and just say, hi, welcome to my world. Keep it short. Keep it genuine. Just acknowledge that you knowbthey’re there.

Do not do the whole pitch slap thing, because you’re going to put them off you straight away. Instead be genuinely curious about something that might be in their profile or what they do.

Once you’ve got them in your world, you can start building the relationship. Engage with their content, comment thoughtfully on their posts. Just be interested in their work without trying to sell yours.

Think of it as planting seeds. Not every connection is gonna turn into a client. Some will be really good people to have in your network and they might refer you or collaborate with you or just support your work and others will turn into clients eventually.

But don’t expect that in the first message. Although it does happen, and I’ve had clients as a result of sending that first message, but don’t expect it is what I’m saying.

The point is to be consistent and make it part of your weekly routine.

You can set yourself a timer. Maybe every Monday you spend 20 minutes finding and connecting with five new people. Over time, that adds up, and all of these people are gonna be really relevant to you and your business.

The beauty of this approach is that you’re not waiting for people to find you. You are actively building an audience of the people who are exactly who you wanna work with, and that’s what we want.

I know this might feel uncomfortable at first. It did for me too. But it actually works really well for those introverts because it’s strategic.

You’re not randomly connecting with anyone and everyone. You’re intentionally connecting with people who fit your ideal client profile, and that feels so much better than trying to be everywhere and talk to everyone.

And it’s online, so you don’t have to show up at networking events or be really high energy. You can choose a time and a space that works for you, and you don’t need to make any small talk. You can just press that connect button and send a quick message.

I promise you, the more you do this, the easier it gets, the more connections you make and the more opportunities come your way. Because when you’re connected to the right people, your contact gets seen by the right people and your post show up on their feed, and they’re gonna start recognizing your name over time.

And when they’re ready to invest in what you do, you are already on their radar because you’ve been showing up consistently in their world.

So if you haven’t done any audience building for a while, why don’t you pick one of the ways I mentioned and see what comes up.

Remember, we need to keep building our audience with new people, because you can’t keep selling to the same people all the time. They’re gonna get fatigued by your message and it’s gonna make you feel like, ah, no one wants my thing.

Not because what you’ve got isn’t valuable, It’s because you’re selling the same thing to the same people and new people aren’t seeing it.

Do this every week. Make it part of your marketing rhythm.

Your ideal clients are out there, they’re on social media right now, and they’re looking for someone to help them, but they just don’t know you exist yet.

So stop waiting to be found and get in front of them. 

If you’d like help building a full marketing strategy that includes both content and proactive audience building, all designed around your energy as an introvert of course,  then have a look at Silent Storm.

It’s where we work one-to-one together. You can find out a bit more and apply for that here.

As always, a huge thank you for listening.

Please rate, review, and share with your audience so that I can help even more people build their quiet confidence and make that loud impact in the world.

Speak soon.